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Chai Feldblum was born in New York City to Meyer Simcha and Esther Feldblum. Meyer Simcha Feldblum was born in Lithuania and survived the Holocaust by living in the forests of Poland.[6] He came to the United States following WWII, where he earned his ordination and Ph.D from Yeshiva University in New York City and became a rabbi and a Professor of Talmud, first at Yeshiva University and then at Bar Ilan University in Israel.[7] Esther Feldblum was the daughter of Rabbi Ephraim Eliezer Yolles, a Hasidic Rebbe (the Samborer Rebbe) of Philadelphia.[8] Esther Feldblum received her Ph.D in Jewish history from Columbia University and taught for one year at Brooklyn College before dying in a car accident at the age of 41.[6] Her dissertation, The American Catholic Press and the Jewish State: 1917-1959, was published as a book posthumously.[9]

Chai Feldblum grew up in Washington Heights in New York City.[10] Her Orthodox Jewish upbringing shaped her commitment to social justice work.

She joined the faculty of Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC in 1991, teaching classes on "legislative lawyering," a phrase she coined to describe the work of the attorneys who craft or lobby for legislation.[11] She founded and is the director of the university's Federal Legislation Clinic.[11]

Since joining Georgetown, Feldblum has continued her own legislative lawyering career. In 1993, she was the legal director for the Campaign for Military Service, a group which lobbied to overturn policies forbidding gay and bisexual people from serving openly in the U.S. armed forces.[16][17] The CMS was the first organization to air a nationwide television commercial on a gay rights issue.[18]

In 2003, Feldblum became co-director of Georgetown's Workplace Flexibility 2010 project, which works to improve conditions for employers and employees.[12][19] The program focuses on flexible work arrangements (FWAs), including phased retirement, non-traditional scheduling and number of hours worked, telecommuting, and multiple points of exit and re-entry into the workforce.[20][21]

In 2006, she founded the Moral Values Project, with the mission statement:

We believe that moral values matter in the governing of our polity. And we believe that Americans can articulate, and live up to, a more progressive set of moral values regarding sexuality, sexual orientation and gender equity. Sexuality can be a positive, important force in our lives. Heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality are all morally neutral. But the love that is expressed by those who are straight, gay or bisexual is morally good – and all equally morally good. All forms of gender are morally neutral. But lack of gender equity is morally bad.[22]

Nobody in America should be fired because they're gay, despite doing a great job and meeting their responsibilities. It's not fair, it's not right, we're going to put a stop to it. And it's for this reason if any of my nominees are attacked not for what they believe but for who they are, I will not waver in my support because I will not waver in my commitment to ending discrimination in all its forms.[23]

In testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Feldblum testified that she did not believe in governmental endorsement of polygamy or polyamorous relationships,[24] consistent with her own writings in which she had always restricted such endorsement to non-sexual domestic partners.[25] She testified that she, therefore, asked for her name to be removed from "Beyond Marriage," a document that supported legal recognition of a variety of nontraditional relationships besides marriage, including "Committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner."[26]

Obama made a recess appointment of Feldblum and three other nominees to the EEOC on March 27, 2010.[27] On December 22, 2010, the U.S. Senate confirmed Feldblum to the seat on the EEOC for a term expiring July 1, 2013.[4] She is openly lesbian, and is the first openly LGBT person to serve on the EEOC.[28]

On December 9, 2013, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed for cloture on Feldblum's renomination to serve for another term on the EEOC, expiring on July 1, 2018.[29] On December 11, 2013, the Senate voted 57-39 to break the filibuster, paving the way for a final vote on Feldblum's nomination. Then, on December 12, 2013, Feldblum was confirmed to a full term in a 54-41 vote.[5]

^Penkower, Monty N. (December 1978). Review of The American Catholic and the Jewish State, 1917–1959, by Esther Yolles Feldblum. American Jewish History. Vol. 68, No. 2, p. 236-239. Preview via JSTOR (registration required for full text). See also product description for book on Amazon.com.